Class 
Book 
Copyright)] 




COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr; 




c 




(Cof)yright, 1906, by Francis D. Tandy Company.) 




A Brief Biographical Sketch of Lincoln, 
Fitting Appreciations of his Character, 
and a Compilation of Selections from 
his State Papers, Addresses and Letters, 
Designed to Impress the Rising Generation 
with His Intense Americanism and Unfalter- 
ing Love of Country, and to Inspire it 
to Deeper Contemplation and Study of 
His Life and Achievement and to Constant 
Emulation of His Uplifting Example 







Prepared under the direction of 




LINCOLN CENTENARY COMMITTEE of the CITY OF NEW YORK 






appointed by 




His 


Honor 


GEORGE BRINTON McCLELLAN, 
1908 


Mayor 



^f^t Htncoln Centenarp Committee of tlje €it^ of 



EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, 

His Honor George Brinton IMcClellz\n, 

The Hon. Joseph Hodges Choate, 

Ex-Officio. 

Hugh Hastings, Chairman. 
Franklin Chase Hoyt, Secretary. 



B. W. B. Brown. 

Jacob A. Cantor. 

Reginald S. Doull. 

Frank L. Dowling. 

Job E. Hedges. 

Gen. Thomas H. Hubbard. 

Will H. Low. 



Hart Lyman. 
Patrick F. McGowan. 
Herman A. Metz. 
Capt. Jacob W. Miller. 
Francis K. Pendleton. 
Herman Ridder. 
Charles R. Skinner. 



Henry L. Stoddard. 



THE aim of this pamphlet, prepared for distribution in the Public 
Schools of New York City on the occasion of the ceremonies 
attending the Commemoration of the Centennial Anniversary 
of Abraham Lincoln's Birth, is not, aside from an illuminating and 
suggestive brief glance at the salient features of his career, to be 
biographical. 

The historian has left nothing unrevealed in the life and career of 
Lincoln. No incident connected therewith; no public or private utter- 
ance of his; no scrap of paper bearing his slightest word, has been 
permitted to escape the painstaking researches of his biographers. 

These exhaustive chronicles, together with much lofty and instruct- 
ive literature bearing on the life and character of Lincoln, are within 
easy command of every school boy and girl. 

It is rather, therefore, the purpose of this pamphlet, by a com- 
pilation of selections from Lincoln's State papers, his public addresses, 
his letters, his sayings, in which his intense Americanism, his rever- 
ence for the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, his 
patriotic devotion to the Union, his broad humanity, are revealed so 
vividly and eloquently, to stimulate our rising generation in a desire 
for deeper and more appreciative study of this " most American of 
Americans " ; to impress it with the fact that the life, character and 
achievement of Abraham Lincoln stand forth as do those of no other 
American since Washington as something beyond human example for 
its utmost reverence and constant emulation. 

Aside from the general application of this purpose there lies a 
peculiar hope and belief that this presentation of testimony to the 
consuming patriotism and admirable personality of Lincoln will 
particularly appeal to the youth of foreign birth or alien parentage 
among us. 

The forlornest immigrant, fleeing from poverty or oppression in 
his native land to seek on our shores the refuge and enjoy the blessings 
and privileges of our country and its government, saved and preserved 
to him and to us for all time by Abraham Lincoln, left never a more 
wretched, squalid, hopeless home than the one in which that immortal 
American — Patriot, Statesman, Martyr — opened his eyes to the light 
of day. Yet he closed them upon it the glorified tenant of a Nation's 
home the most enviable on earth wherein man may dwell. 



The Purpose. 



Born the lowly, neglected backwoods boy. Dying a greater than 
the mightiest king— not in despotic power or the glitter of pomp, but 
in the circumstance of splendid achievement for his country and man- 
kind. . 1,. . 

Moreover, the purpose of this offering of suggestive subjects 
conducive to a closer study of Lincoln's example is not alone to impress 
our youth with the beauty and nobility of his character and the grandeur 
of his work for their inspiration and emulation. It is likewise with the 
hope of imbuing them still more intensely with love for, and moving 
them to deeper devotion to, a country under the fulfilling genius of 
whose institutions, as Lincoln understood and interpreted their spirit 
and intent, became possible the evolution of a world figure at once so 
simple, so noble, so great as he. 



**Ci)e jftrst amertcan. 



»» 



From the Ode by James Russell Lowell, recited July 
21, 1865, on the occasion of the ceremonies in 
commemoration of Harvard graduates who gave 
their lives to their country during the Civil War. 



**€l)c fir^t American/* 

Life may be given in many ways, 
And loyalty to Truth sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field. 

So bountiful is Fate; 

But then to stand beside her, 

When craven churls deride her, 
To front a lie in arras and not to yield, 

Tliis shows, methinks, God's plan 

And measure of a stalwart man, 

Limbed like the heroic breeds. 
Who stand self-poised on manhood's solid earth, 
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth. 
Fed from within with all the strength he needs. 
Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 

Whom late the Nation he had led. 

With ashes on her head. 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief. 
***** 

Nature, they say, doth dote, 
And cannot make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan. 
Repeating as by rote: 
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw. 

And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of m.ankind indeed. 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be. 
Not lured by any cheat of birth. 
But by his clear-grained human worth. 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 

They knew that outward grace is dust ; 
They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain peak of mind, 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 
Broad prairie, rather, genial, level-lined. 
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 

Nothing of Europe here, 
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still. 
Ere any names of Serf or Peer 



10 " The First American." 

Could Nature's equal scheme deface 

And thwart her genial will; 
Here was a type of the true older race. 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 

I praise him not; it were too late; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory 

Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 

Safe in himself as in a fate. 
So always firmly he: 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide. 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime. 

Till the wise years decide. 

Great captains, with their guns and drums. 

Disturb our judgment for the hour. 
But at last silence comes; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower. 

Our children shall behold his fame, 
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man. 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. 
New birth of our new soil, the first American. 




- ^«JB|K *^ if* »* 



EARLY HOxME OF ABRAHAM IJXCOEN, 

At Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Ky. 

(From the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, by special permission 
of Francis D. Tandy Company.) 



Mtftf anti %i&t of iltncoln. 



^ittl) ant! J^i^e of Hincohu 

'TpHOMAS LINCOLN, orphaned in his early boyhood, a wandering 
"■■ laborer, " ignorant, needy and thriftless," of a rude and rugged 
pioneer ancestry, every generation of which had struggled with 
the hardships, toils and perils of frontier life, having wandered from 
his native Virginia wilderness to the newer one of Kentucky, at the 
age of twenty-eight married Nancy Hanks, of a family, like the 
Lincolns, with no pride of ancestry nor hope of fortune; a most 
estimable woman withal, superior mentally to her husband and more 
serious of purpose. This was in 1806. Three years later, to this 
parentage that had inherited poverty and augmented the heritage; 
in a miserable hut — a one-roomed cabin without floor or window — 
in a sterile and solitary part of that Kentucky wilderness ; " in the 
midst of the most unpromising circumstances that ever witnessed the 
advent of a hero into the world," a son was born, on the 12th day of 
February, I8O9. 

This son they named Abraham. And from the squalor and wretch- 
edness of that nativity, through years of toil and struggle and suffering, 
the heir to it all rose to be the Patriot, the Statesman, the President, 
the Liberator — Abraham Lincoln. 

Thomas Lincoln, " content if he could keep body and soul together 
for himself and his family, was ever seeking, without success, to 
better his unhappy condition by moving on from one such scene of 
dreary desolation to another," and when Abraham was four years old 
the family was removed from that cabin in Hardin County to another 
location. This being no more promising than the first, the pinch of 
poverty remained with them, and at last, in the year I8I6, Thomas 
Lincoln emigrated from Kentucky and settled in Indiana with his 
family, not far from Gentryville, but still in the wilderness, and in a 
locality of such unwholesome environment that after two years of 
miserable existence there, first in a cabin enclosed on but three sides, 
and then in a rough log hut without window or door, and with the 
muddy ground for a floor, Abraham Lincoln's mother succumbed to 
the malarial infection of the spot and died. 

Abraham was then nine years old. The loss of his mother was 
his first great heart sorrow. He loved her dearly. " All I have and 
am," Lincoln said in his years of triumph, " I owe to my mother." 

A year after the death of his wife, Thomas Lincoln returned to 
Kentucky and married and brought to his cheerless Indiana home a 
second wife, the widow Sally Bush Johnson. With her, however, came 
brightness to that lowly and darkened wilderness home. She had 
children of her own, but on the motherless children of Thomas Lincoln 
she bestowed impartially her love and care. All his life Abraham 



14 Birth and Rise of Lincoln. 

Lincoln remembered this timelj^ friend of his melancholy childhood 
days with a touching tenderness^ and with constant solicitude for her 
welfare, comfort and happiness. 

Hon. Joseph H. Choate, in his address on Lincoln, delivered before 
the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, November 13, 1900, sympa- 
thetically sketches the conditions that surrounded Lincoln and had 
their influence on him at this seemingly hopeless period of his life. 

" From the time when he could barely handle tools until he attained 
his majority," says Mr. Choate, "Lincoln's life was that of a simple 
farm laborer, poorly clad, housed and fed, at work either on his 
father's wretched farm, or hired out to neighboring farmers. * * * 
His whole schooling, obtained during such odd times as could be 
spared from grinding labor, did not amount in all to as much as one 
year, and the quality of the teaching was of the lowest possible grade, 
including only the elements of reading, writing and cyphering. 
* * * But it was the constant use of the little knowledge which he 
had that developed and exercised his mental powers. After the hard 
day's work was done, while others slept, he toiled on, always reading or 
writing. From an early age he did his own thinking and made up his 
own mind — invaluable traits in the future President." 

Thomas Lincoln, fate having proved still unkind to him in the dis- 
mal Indiana field, in 1830 emigrated to Illinois, where he settled in a 
wooded section, on the Sangamon River. There, with the help of his 
son, he put up the log cabin in which he ever after lived, and where he 
died. 

Soon after the removal to Illinois, Abraham Lincoln came to his 
majority. For two years after arriving at man's estate he was by 
turns hired farm hand, clerk in a backwoods store, and ready with his 
hand for any work by which he might earn his daily bread. At twenty- 
three he was still homeless and penniless, although his force of 
character, and the use to which he could readily put the crude elements 
of education he had mastered, had impressed the rude community in 
which he lived with the belief that he was destined for a life and a 
career far above any it had to offer him. 

Then came his opportunity. The grim old Sac warrior. Black 
Hawk, for reasons he assumed to be just, had become such a menace 
to peaceful settlers in Illinois that the Governor of the State was 
compelled to call for volunteers to suppress him and his predatory 
bands. This incident is known to history as the Black Hawk War. 
" I was elected a captain of volunteers," Lincoln wrote in 1859, " a 
success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since." 

The war had no battle in which Lincoln was engaged, and all the 
glory he won was the prestige this recognition of his consequence 
and ability gave him. So great was this that when he returned home 
to Sangamon County from the war and jDut himself forward as a 



Birth and Rise of Lincoln. 15 

candidate for the Legislature, he carried his home district almost 
unanimously, although he was defeated in the district at large. 

His local fame was made, however, and in 1834, 1836 and 1838 
he was elected to the office for which he was defeated the first time, 
which, he was always proud of saying, was the only time he was ever 
beaten by the people. 

Lincoln made his mark as a legislator, and while serving in that 
capacity studied law and was admitted to practice. He kept his grasp 
on the political situation, and in 1846 was elected to Congress. He 
served one term, and declined a renomination. After retiring from 
Congress in 1849 he gave more of his attention to the practice of 
his profession than to politics, and, as he records of himself, was 
losing interest in the latter when the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise aroused him again. 

This was in 1854, and it was the beginning of Lincoln's great career 
which is now familiar world history. 

The " Missouri Compromise " was the provision in the act of 
Congress admitting Missouri into the Union in 1821 as a slave State, 
a provision insisted upon by the growing anti-slavery sentiment in the 
Northern States, and by which slavery was forever prohibited in all 
the territory of the United States lying north of latitude 36° 3l', 
otherwise known as the Northwest Territory. This guarantee of free- 
dom to that domain quieted for years the slavery agitation as a 
dominating party issue, but at last the lure of that vast and promising 
area about which was drawn the taboo against slavery tempted the 
cupidity of the jDro-slavery element of the country beyond all protest 
of patriotism and wisdom, and to open it to the entrance of slavery, 
that element being in control of all branches of the Federal Govern- 
ment, the compact of 1821 was repudiated and the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise effected. 

This aroused the slumbering anti-slavery sentiment in the non- 
slaveholding States of the Union, and led to the organization in 1856 
of the Republican party, " for the avowed purpose of preventing, by 
constitutional methods, the further extension of slavery." 

Lincoln rapidly gained ascendancy in the councils of the new party. 
His unique personality, his forcefulness of character, his wonderful 
mastery of every phase of the vital political issues agitating the 
country, had brought him to the height of a conspicuous national figure, 
and it was plain to every student of the situation that he was to be 
reckoned with by no means lightly in the progress of events the shadow 
of whose approach was creeping ominously over the land. 

Verification of this came four years later, when, " at the age of 
fifty-one, this child of the wilderness, this farm laborer, rail-splitter, 
flatboatman — this surveyor, lawyer, orator, statesman and patriot 
found himself elected by the great party which was pledged to prevent 



l6 Birth and Rise of Lincoln. 

at all hazards the further extension of slavery, as the chief magistrate 
of the Republic, bound to carry out that purpose, to be the leader and 
ruler of the nation in its most trying hour." 

His great heart bleeding as he contemplated the woes that sectional 
hate and partisan frenzy had brought upon his beloved country, threat- 
ening its life, and for the healing of which all his earnest appeals to 
the patriotism of his countrymen and eager assurances of his national 
good will and determination to abide by the traditions of the Consti- 
tution and the Union had been rejected, Lincoln bowed his shoulders 
to the tremendous burden of responsibility that met him at the outset 
of his administration. 

With a marvelous patience; uncomplaining, even magnanimous, 
under misrepresentation and calumny such as the worst of men might 
not expect to have put upon them; firm and unwavering; sustained by 
an abiding faith in the wisdom and justice and patriotism of his 
policy and course and in the righteousness of his motives; his one 
sworn purpose to save and preserve to posterity the government whose 
destinies had been confided to his care, he went forward to the end. 
Great was his triumph. 

" He lived," quoting the eloquent words of Mr. Choate's address, 
" to see his Proclamation of Emancipation embodied in an amendment 
of the Constitution, adopted by Congress and submitted to the States 
for ratification. * * * It was given him to witness the surrender 
of the Rebel army and the fall of their capital, and the starry flag 
that he loved waving in triumph over the national soil. When he 
died by the madman's hand in the supreme hour of victory, the 
vanquished lost their best friend, and the human race one of its 
noblest examples; and all the friends of freedom and justice, in whose 
cause he lived and died, joined hands as mourners at his grave." 

President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth in Ford's The- 
atre, Washington, on the night of April 14, 1865. He was removed 
to the Petersen residence, opposite the theatre, where he died at 
twenty-two minutes after seven o'clock on the morning of April 15, 
aged 56 years, 2 months and 2 days. There was not a loyal family 
in the land that did not mourn. He left a fame immortal — as solid 
as justice and as genuine as truth. Under an appropriate monument 
his remains lie entombed at Springfield, Illinois, and to-day a happy 
and united country is doing sacred honor to his memory, and rejoicing 
in the day that gave him birth to become that country's savior, and to 
place it for all time upon the firm foundation of Liberty, that the world 
might hail it as indeed the land of the free and the home for the 
oppressed of all landst 



patriotic learnings anU appeals. 



Tliat bitter contention over the issues on whicli the great 
political parties were divided at the time Lincoln began 
his public career bore toward a future of evil portent to 
the country was early in that career apparent in the 
prophetic vision of his genius would seem to be evident 
from his early utterances, public and private. They were 
eloquent with appeal and warning. They testify to-day 
to the utter unselfishness of his purpose, to his abiding 
devotion to country, to his uncompromising Americanism, 
to his intense love for the Union which he lived to save, 
at the sacrifice of his own blameless life in the saving. 



patriotic ^atning^ ani^ ^ppeal^* 
Foreseeing a Danger. 

(From an address delivered before the Young Men's^Lyceum Springfteld, 
January i27, 1837, on "The Perpetuation of Our Pohticai Institutions. ) 

WE FIND ourselves under the government of a system of political 
institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and 
religious liberty than any of which the history of former times 
tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves 
the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in 
the acquirement or establishment of them; they are a legacy bequeathed 
us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and de- 
parted race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they per- 
formed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves us, of this 
goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys a political 
edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only to transmit these— the 
former unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the latter undecayed by 
the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation— to the latest generation 
that fate shall permit the world to know. * * * 

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I 
answer. If it ever reaches us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot 
come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its 
author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all 
time, or die by suicide. * * * . • i 

That our government should have been maintained in its original 
form, from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. 
It had many props to support it through the period, which now are 
decayed and crumbled away. Through that period it was felt by aU 
to be an undecided experiment; now it is understood to be a successtul 
one. Then, all that sought celebrity and fame and distinction expected 
to find them in the success of that experiment. * * * If they 
succeeded they were to be immortalized. If they failed they 
were to be called knaves and fools, and fanatics for a fleetmg 
hour; then to sink and be forgotten. They succeeded. The experi- 
ment is successful, and thousands have won their deathless names 
in making it so. But the game is caught; and I believe it is true that 
with the catching end the pleasures of the chase. This field of glory is 
harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will 
arise, and they too will seek a field. It is to deny what the history ot 
the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents 
will not continue to spring up amongst us. And when they do, they 
will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion as others 
have done before them. * * * Is it unreasonable, then to expect 
that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition 



20 Patriotic Warnings and Appeals. 

sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up 
among us ? And when such an one does, it will require the people to be 
united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and 
generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs. 

Reverence for the Laws. 

(From the same address.) 

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his 
posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the 
least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their 
violation by others. * * * Let reverence for the laws be breathed 
by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her 
lap ; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges ; let it be 
written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs ; let it be preached 
from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts 
of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the 
nation ; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave 
and the gay, of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, 
sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars. 

While ever a state of feeling such as this shall universally or even 
very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, 
and fruitless every attempt^ to subvert our national freedom. 

" Eternal Fidelity to the Just Cause." 

(Peroration of a speech delivered in the House of Representatives of Illinois, 
in December, 1839, during a discussion that suggested the subject of 
dangers threatening the country through political corruption and partisan 
frenzy.) 

INIany free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers ; 
but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, 
but that I never deserted her. I know that the great volcano at Washing- 
ton, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching 
forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which 
is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth 
of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living 
thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons on the waves of hell, 
the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare 
resist its destroying course with the hopelessness of their effort; and, 
knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by 
it I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we 
fall in tlie struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause 
we believe to be just; it shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul 
within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy 



Patriotic Warnings and Appeals. 21 

of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my 
country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly 
and alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here, 
without contemplating consequences, before high heaven and in the face 
of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, 
of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks 
with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take? Let none 
falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, 
we shall fail, be it so. We still have the proud consolation of saying 
to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, 
that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in 
disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending. 



Vigorous Talk to a President. 

(From his speech in Congress, January 12, 1848. The Mexican War was in 
progress while Lincohi was a Representative in Congress. He did not be- 
lieve the war was a just one on the part of our government, but one 
begun and waged for selfish political purposes. The first speech of his in 
Congress to be printed was a criticism of the message of President James 
K. Polk regarding the war, and was delivered on the above date. It 
abounds in the bold, axiomatic, aggressive, thought-impelling terms of 
speech that stamp Lincoln's utterances with the mark of genius.) 

Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence as 
to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the place 
where the hostilities of the present [Mexican] war commenced, let the 
President answer the interrogatories I proposed * * * or some 
other similar ones. Let him answer fully, fairly, and candidly. Let 
him answer with facts and not with arguments. Let him remember he 
sits where Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer as 
Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty 
will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion — no equivocation. 
And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the 
first blood of the war was shed — that it was not within an inhabited 
country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted them- 
selves to the civil authority of Texas or of the United States, then I 
am with him for his justification. * * * But if he cannot or will 
not do this — if on any pretense or no pretense he shall refuse or omit 
it — then I shall be fully convinced of what I more than suspect already 
— that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the 
blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against 
him; that originally having some strong motive — what, I will not stop 
now to give my opinion concerning — to involve the two countries in a 
war, and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon 
the exceeding brightness of military glory — that attractive rainbow that 



22 Patriotic Warnings and Appeals. 

rises in showers of blood — that serpent's eye that charms to destroy — 
he plunged into it, and has swept on and on till, disappointed in his 
calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now 
finds himself he knows not where. How like the half-insane mumbling 
of a fever dream is the whole war part of his late message J * * * 
All this shows that the President is in nowise satisfied with his own 
positions. First he takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it 
he argues himself out of it, then seizes another and goes through the 
same process, and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, 
he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast 
off. His mind, taxed beyond his power, is running hither and thither, 
like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position 
on which it can settle down and be at ease. * * * At the end of 
about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the 
most splendid successes, every department and every part, land and 
water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men 
could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought 
men could not do — after all this, this same President gives a long 
message, without showing us that as to the end he himself has even an 
imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he 
is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. 
God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his 
conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity. 

The Way for a Young Man to Rise. 

(From a letter to William H. Herndon, July 10, 1848.) 

I cannot but think there is some mistake in your impression of the 
motives of the old men. I suppose I am now one of the old men ; and 
I declare, on my veracity, which I think is good with you, that nothing 
could afford me more satisfaction than to learn that you and others 
of my young friends at home are doing battle in the contest, and 
endearing themselves to the people, and taking a stand far above any 
I have ever been able to reach in their admiration. I cannot conceive 
that other old men feel differently. Of course I cannot demonstrate 
what I say ; but I was young once, and I am sure I was never ungener- 
ously thrust back. I hardly know what to say. The way for a young 
man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting 
that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you that 
suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation. There 
may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; 
and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its 
true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see 
if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to 
fall into it. 



Patriotic Wahnings and Appeals. 23 

Danger to Liberty in Discarding the Ancient 

Faith. 

(From the speech at Peoria, 111., October 16, 1854, in reply to Douglas's 
advocacy of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.) 

Little by little^ but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have 
been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago we 
began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that 
beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some 
men to enslave others is a " sacred right of self-government." These 
principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and 
Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other. 
* * * Already the liberal party throughout the world express the 
apprehension " that the one retrograde institution in America is under- 
mining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest 
political system the world ever saw." This is not the taunt of enemies, 
but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it — to despise 
it.'' Is there no danger to liberty itself in discarding the earliest 
practice and first precept of our ancient faith .^ In our greedy chase to 
make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we " cancel and tear in 
pieces " even the white man's charter of freedom. 

Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify 
it. Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit, if not the blood, of 
the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of " moral right " 
back upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of " necessity." 
Let us return it to the jjosition our fathers gave it, and there let it rest 
in peace. Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it 
the practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and 
South — let all Americans — let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in 
the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved 
the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it 
forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it that the 
succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up 
and call us blessed to the latest generations. 

" You Shall Not." 

(From a speech during the Fremont-Buchanan presidential campaign, de- 
livered at Galena, 111., August 1, 1856.) 

You further charge us with being disunionists. If you mean that 
it is our aim to dissolve the Union, I for myself answer that it is 
untrue ; for those who act with me I answer that it is untrue. * * * 
We, the majority, would not strive to dissolve the Union; and if any 
attempt is made, it must be by you, who so loudly stigmatize us as 
disunionists. But the Union, in any event, will not be dissolved. We 
don't want to dissolve it, and if you attempt it we won't let you. 



Patriotic Warnings and Appeals. 



With the purse and sword, the army and navy and treasury, in our 
hands and at our command, you could not do it. This government 
would be very weak indeed if a majority with a disciplined army and 
navy and a well-filled treasury could not preserve itself when attacked 
by an unarmed, undisciplined, unorganized minority. All this talk 
about the dissolution of the Union is humbug, nothing but folly. We 
do not want to dissolve the Union ; you shall not. 

" A House Divided Against Itself." 

(From a speech delivered June 16, 1858, before the Illinois Republican State 
Convention at Springfield, 111., which had nominated him for United 
States Senator; the epigrammatic and prophetic declaration which stirred 
the country as it had never been stirred before by any political utterance.) 

We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with 
the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery 
agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not 
only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it 
will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. " A 
house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government 
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect 
the Union to be dissolved — I' do not expect the house to fall — but I 
do exjDect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or 
all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further 
spread of it, and j^lace it where the public mind shall rest in the belief 
that it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates will push 
it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well 
as new. North as well as South. 

" The Electric Cord " in the Declaration. 

(From a speech delivered at Chicago, 111., July 10, 1858, during the Lincoln- 
Douglas campaign.) 

It happens that we meet together once every year, somewhere about 
the 4th of July. * * * We are now a mighty nation: we are 
thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit 
about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run 
our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, 
and we discover that we were then a very small people, in point of 
numbers vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent 
of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men. 
Vre look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to 
our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back 
as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. 
We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers 
and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principles 



Patriotic Warnings and Appeals. 25 



that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they 
then did it has followed that the degree of prosj^erity which we now 
enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind our- 
selves of all the good done in this process of time^ of how it was done 
and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we 
go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves — we feel more 
attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country 
we inhabit. In every way we are better men, in the age, and race, and 
country in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have 
done all this, we have not yet reached the whole. There is something 
else connected with it. We have, besides these men — descended by 
blood from our ancestors — among us, perhaps half our people who are 
not descendants at all of these men ; they are men who have come from 
Europe^ — German, Irish, French, and Scandinavian — men that have 
come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and 
settled here, finding themselves our equal in all things. If they look 
back through this history to trace their connection with those days by 
blood, they find they have none; they cannot carry themselves back 
into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part 
of us; but when they look through that old Declaration of Independ- 
ence, they find that those old men say that " We hold these truths to 
be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel 
that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation 
to those men, that it is the father of all moral principles in them, and 
that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the 
blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, 
and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that 
links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will 
link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the 
minds of men throughout the world. 

Freedom's Right for Ai.l, Wherever Born. 

(From a letter, May 17, 1859, in answer to one from German citizens asking 
him if he was for or against a constitutional provision restricting the 
naturalization of foreigners, then lately adopted by Massachusetts.) 

Massachusetts is a sovereign and independent State; and it is no 
privilege of mine to scold her for what she does. Still, if from what 
she has done an inference is sought to be drawn as to what I would do, 
I may without impropriety speak out. I say, then, that, as I under- 
stand the Massachusetts provision, I am against its adoption in Illinois, 
or in any other place where I have a right to oppose it. Understanding 
the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am 
opposed to whatever tends to degrade them. I have some little notoriety 
for commiserating the oppressed negro; and I should be strangely 
inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing 



26 Patriotic Warnings and Appeals. 

rights of white men, even thougli born in different lands, and speaking 
different languages from myself. 

Brothers or a Common Country. 

(From remarks made to his fellow citizens at Springfield, 111., at a meeting 
held November 20, 1860, in celebration of his election to the Presidency.) 

In all our rejoicings, let us neither express nor cherish any hard 
feelings toward any citizen who by his vote has differed with us. Let 
us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a 
common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal 
feeling. 




as ^e foiirneget? to ^asljiugton. 



Bidding a pathetic farewell to his old-time friends and 
neighbors in Springfield, 111., February 11, 1861, Lincoln 
departed on the journey to Washington to take up the 
duties of the great office to which he had been chosen. 
He was greeted everywhere on the way with assurances 
of loyalty and support in the crisis that now seemed 
inevitable. During the journey he delivered some of the 
most eloquent and impressive addresses of his career, all 
breathing the same supreme moral principle, patriotic 
impulse, and firmness of purpose that had from the 
beginning marked him as a man of wondrous fitness for 
the mighty task his country had called him to execute. 



%^ i^e gFourn^peti to ^a^ljington, 
A Pathetic Parting. 

(Lincoln's farewell words on leaving his Springfield home, February 11, 1861.) 

MY FRIENDS — No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my 
feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the 
kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived 
a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. 
Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not 
knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me 
greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the as- 
sistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot suc- 
ceed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can 
go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us 
confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending 
you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an 
aifectionate farewell. 

The Duty of the People. 

(From his reply to Governor Morton's address of welcome at Indianapolis, 
Ind., February 11, 1861.) 

You have been pleased to address yourself to me chiefly in behalf 
of this glorious Union in which we live, in all of which you have my 
hearty sympathy, and, as far as may be within my power, will have, 
one and inseparably, my hearty co-operation. While I do not expect, 
upon this occasion, or until I get to Washington, to attempt any lengthy 
speech, I will only say that to the salvation of the Union there needs 
but one single thing, the hearts of a people like yours. When the people 
rise in mass in behalf of the Union and the liberties of this country, 
truly may it be said, " The gates of hell cannot prevail against them." 
In all trying positions in which I shall be placed, and doubtless I shall 
be placed in many such, my reliance will be upon you and the people 
of the United States ; and I wish you to remember, now and forever, 
that it is your business, and not mine ; that if the union of these States 
and the liberties of this people shall be lost, it is but little to any one 
man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions 
of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all 
coming time. It is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and 
liberty for yourselves, and not for me. I appeal to you again to 
constantly bear in mind that not with politicians, not with Presidents, 
not with office-seekers, but with you, is the question: Shall the Union 
and shall the liberties of this country be preserved to the latest 
generations .'' 



so As He Journeyed to Washington. 

For Support in His Great Task. 

(From an address to the Legislature of Ohio at Columbus, February 13, 1861.) 

It is true * * * that very great responsibility rests upon me 
in the position to which the votes of the American people have called 
me. I am deeply sensible of that weighty responsibility. I cannot 
but know what you all know, that without a name, perhaps without a 
reason why I should have a name, there has fallen upon me a task 
such as did not rest even upon the Father of his Country ; and so 
feeling, I can turn and look for that support without which it will be 
impossible for me to perform that great task. I turn, then, and look 
to the American people, and to that God who has never forsaken them. 

Willing to Ln^ and Die By His Faith. 

(Address in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, February 22, 1861.) 

I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing in this 
place, where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the 
devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which 
we live, * * *• All the political sentiments I entertain have been 
drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments 
which originated in and were given to the world from this hall. I have 
never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the senti- 
ments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. * * * I 
have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that 
kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of 
separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment in 
the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not alone to the 
people of this country, but hope to all the world, for all future time. 
It was that wliich gave promise that in due time the weights would be 
lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an 
equal chance. This is the sentiment emphasized in the Declaration of 
Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved on that 
basis.'' If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the 
world if I can help to save it. * * * But if this country cannot 
be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would 
rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. Now, in my view 
of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. 
There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course; and 
I may say in advance that there will be no bloodshed imless it is forced 
upon the government. The government will not use force unless force 
is used against it. * * * j n-,ay * * * have said something 
indiscreet. [Cries of " No, no."] But I have said nothing but what 
I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to 
die by. 



a JWaster in t\)t Crisis. 



No man was called upon ever to face so desperate, so 
disheartening a situation as that which confronted 
Lincoln when he became President, March 4, 1861. His 
conciliatory and patriotic appeals had been unheeded by 
the South, and her leaders were already preparing for 
war. The crisis was at hand, and Lincoln threw his great 
heart and soul into renewed effort to avert it, all in vain. 



The American Union Cannot Be Broken. 

(From Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861.) 

I hold that^ in contemplation of universal law and of the Consti- 
tution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, 
if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. 
It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in 
its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the 
express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will 
endure forever — it being impossible to destroy it except by some action 
not provided for in the instrument itself. 

Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an 
association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a 
contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it ? 
One party to a contract may violate it — break it, so to speak; but 
does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? 

Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition 
that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the 
history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Con- 
stitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 
1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the 
then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be 
perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And, finally, 
in 1787 one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the 
Constitution was " to form a more perfect Union." 

But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of 
the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before 
the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity. 

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion 
can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to 
that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any State 
or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary 
or revolutionary, according to circumstances. 

I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, 
the Union is unbroken ; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, 
as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the 
Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem 
to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it so far as 
practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall 
withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner direct the 
contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as 
the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend 
and maintain itself. 



34 A Master in the Crisis. 

A Last Appeal to Patriotism and Reason. 

(From Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 186L) 

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole 
subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an 
object to any of you to hurry in hot haste to a stejD which you would 
never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; 
but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now 
dissatisfied, still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the 
sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new 
administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change 
either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right 
side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate 
action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on 
Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent 
to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. 

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, 
is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail 
you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 
You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while 
I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect and defend it." 

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not 
be enemies. Though passion maj?^ have strained, it must not break our 
bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every 
battlefi.eld and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all 
over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again 
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. 



To Save the Union, First of All. 

(A letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York "Tribune," who, imder 
the heading of " The Prayer of Twenty Millions," had addressed to Lin- 
coln in the editorial columns of his paper of August 20, 1863, and over his 
own signature, a bitter rebuke of Lincoln's management of the war, and 
particularly of his policy in delaying the freeing of the Southern slaves.) 

I have just read yours of the IQth, addressed to myself through the 
New York " Tribune." If there be in it any statements or assumptions 
of fact which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, con- 
trovert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe 
to be falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, argue against them. If 
there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it 
in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to 
be right. 

As to the policy I " seem to be pursuing," as you say, I have not 
meant to leave any one in doubt. 



A Master in the Crisis. 35 

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under 
the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, 
the nearer the Union will be " the Union as it was." If there be those 
who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save 
slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not 
save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do 
not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save 
the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could 
save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I 
could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could 
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. 
What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it 
helps to save the Union ; and what I forbear I forbear because I do not 
believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I 
shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more 
whenever I shall believe doing more will heljD the cause. I shall try to 
correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so 
fast as they shall appear to be true views. 

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official 
duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish 
that all men everywhere could be free. 

" Freedom to the Slave Assures Freedom to the 

Free." 

(From the Annual Message, December 1, 1863. September 22, 1862, Lincoln 
issued a preliminary proclamation declaring that on January 1, 1863, all 
slaves held in States or parts of States in rebellion should be free, in ac- 
cordance with the terms of a final proclamation to be issued on that date. 
His annual message to Congress, December 1, 1862, was largely devoted 
to the presentation of the vital question.) 

Our national strife springs not from our permanent part, not from 
the land we inhabit, not from our national homestead. There is no 
possible severing of this but would multiply, and not mitigate, evils 
among us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and 
abhors separation. In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however 
much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost. 

Our strife pertains to ourselves — to the passing generations of men ; 
and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of 
one generation. 

We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we 
say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do 
know how to save it. We — even we here — hold the power and bear the 
resi^onsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to 
the free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We 
shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other 



36 A Mastkr in T3IE Crisis. 

means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, 
generous, just— a way which, if followed, the world will forever 
applaud, and God must forever bless. 

The Shackles Broken. 

(Final Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863.) 

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of 
our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation 
was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among 
other things, the following, to wit: 

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves 
within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof 
shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, 
thenceforward, and forever free ; and the Executive Government of tlie 
United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, 
will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do 
no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts 
they may make for their actual freedom. 

That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by 
proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in 
which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against 
the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, 
shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of tlie 
United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a 
majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, 
shall in the absence of strong countervailing testimony be deemed 
conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then 
in rebellion against the United States. 

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of tlie United 
States, by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of 
the army and navy of the United States, in time of actual armed 
rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, 
and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, 
do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand 
eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purjDose so 
to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from 
the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and 
parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day 
in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit : 

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, 
Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, 
Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. INIary, St. Martin, and Or- 
leans, including the city of New Orleans), jNIississippi, Alabama, 



A Master in the Crisis. 37 

Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except 
the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the 
counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, 
Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Ports- 
mouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely 
as if this proclamation were not issued. 

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do 
order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated 
States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and 
that the Executive Government of the United States, including the 
military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the 
freedom of said persons. 

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to 
abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I rec- 
ommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully 
for reasonable wages. 

And I further declare and make known that such persons of 
suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United 
States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to 
man vessels of all sorts in said service. 

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, war- 
ranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the 
considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty 
God. 

On the Field of Gettysburg. 

(The Gettysburg Address. November 19, 1863, a portion of the battlefield 
of Gettysburg was dedicated and consecrated as a national cemeterj^, 
where the remains of the heroes who fell in that decisive struggle at arms 
might find a fitting last resting place. Edward Everett was the orator 
on the occasion, and Lincoln followed him in an address — " an address of 
dedication so pertinent," in the words of Lincoln's biographers, Nicolay 
and Hay, " so brief yet so comprehensive, so terse yet so eloquent, linking 
the deeds of the present to the thoughts of the future, with simple words, 
in such loving, original, yet exquisitely molded, maxim-like phrases that 
the best critics have awarded it an unquestionable rank as one of the 
world's masterpieces in rhetorical art.") 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this 
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the 
proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that 
nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to 
dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who 
here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether 
fitting and proper that we should do this. 



38 A Master in the Crisis. 

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — 
we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 
struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add 
or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we 
say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the 
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they 
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us 
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from 
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which 
they gave the last full measure of devotion ; that v/e here highly resolve 
that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, 
shall have a new birth of freedom ; and that government of the people, 
by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 



Seeing a General's Worth Through His Faults. 

(Letter to General Joseph Hooker, January 26, 1863.) 

General — I have placed you at the head of the Army of the 
Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be 
sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there 
are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. 
I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which of course I like. 
I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which 
you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable 
if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within 
reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that 
during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken 
counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in 
which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious 
and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in sucli a way as to believe 
it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government 
needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, 
that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain 
successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military 
success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support 
you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it 
has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit 
which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their com- 
mander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. 
I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor 
Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army 
while such a spirit prevails in it; and now beware of rashness. Beware 
of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and 
jrive us victories. 



A Master in the Crisis. 39 

" That We May Not Lose Our Birthright." 

(From an address to the 166th Ohio regiment, August 22, 1864.) 

I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to 
soldiers, to impress upon them, in a few brief remarks, the importance 
of success in this contest. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time 
to come, that we should perpetuate for our children's children that 
great and free government which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg 
you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I 
happen, temporarily, to occupy this White House. I am a living 
witness that any one of your children may look to com/e here as my 
father's child has. It is in order that each one of you may have, 
through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field 
and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence; that 
you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its 
desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be 
maintained, that we may not lose our birthright — not only for one, but 
for two or three years. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure 
such an inestimable jewel. 

"With Malice Toward None; With Charity for 

All." 

(Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865. Lincoln was re-elected President 
in 1864. The work he had done, against armed foes in front and unarmed 
foes, masked as friends, behind, was endorsed by an overwhelming ma- 
jority. His second inaugural address is one of the immortal classics of 
our political literature.) 

Fellow-countrymen — At this second appearing to take the oath of 
the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address 
than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of 
the course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the 
expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been 
constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest 
which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the 
nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our 
arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the 
public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and 
encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no j^rediction in 
regard to it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts 
were anxiously directed to an imiDcnding civil war. All dreaded it — 
all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered 
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, 
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war — 
seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both 



40 A Master in the Crisis. 

parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than 
let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than 
let it perish. And the war came. 

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not dis- 
tributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of 
it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All 
knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To 
strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for 
which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the 
government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial 
enlargement of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration 
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of 
the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should 
cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less funda- 
mental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the 
same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It maj seem 
strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in 
wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces ; but let us 
judge not, that vv^e be not judged. The prayers of both could not be 
answered — that of neither has been answered fully. 

The Almighty has His own purposes. " Woe unto the world because 
of off"enses ! for it must needs be that off'enses come ; but woe to that 
man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American 
slavery is one of those off'enses which, in the providence of God, must 
needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time. 
He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South 
this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the off'ense came, 
shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes 
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him.'' Fondly 
do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war 
may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all 
the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of 
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by 
the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, " The judgments of 
the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in 
the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the 
work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who 
shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do 
all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among our- 
selves, and with all nations. 




HOUSE IX WHICH LIN'COLX DIED, 

Xo. 516 Tenth St., X. W., opposite Ford's Theatre, Washington, D. C. 

(Copyright by Francis D. Taniiy Company.) 



#ifi (ireat flmnan ^|)inpat!jp. 



Firm as a rock, and unbending in holding men to their 
duty, Lincoln was yet so overflowing with human sym- 
pathy and mercy that even the pressure and weight of 
momentous and distressing State affairs did not deter him 
from expressing the one or granting the other. Troubled 
as his great heart constantly was in those days, it was 
never so full of trouble that he had not room in it for 
comfort and cheer and consolation for others. Even the 
petty and passing griefs of childhood claimed his sym- 
pathy at all times. He ever brought smiles from tears. 



i^M oBreat i^uman ^pmpatljp. 

The Loss or "Tad^s" Nanny Goat. 

(From a letter to Mrs. Lincoln, August 8, 1863. " Tad " was Lincoln's little 
boy, the pet of the AVhite House.) 

Tell dear Tad poor " Nanny Goat " is lost, and Mrs. Cuthbert and 
I are in distress about it. The day you left, Nanny was found resting 
herself and chewing her little cud on the middle of Tad's bed; but 
now she's gone! The gardener kept complaining that she destroyed 
the flowers, till it was concluded to bring her down to the White House. 
This was done, and the second day she had disappeared and has not 
been heard of since. This is the last we know of poor " Nanny." 



The Case of a Man Named King. 

(Telegrams to General Meade from the Executive Mansion, November 20, 

1863.) 

If there is a man by the name of King under sentence to be shot, 
please suspend execution till further order, and send record. 

An intelligent woman in deep distress, called this morning, saying 
her husband, a lieutenant in the Army of Potomac, was to be shot 
next Monday for desertion, and putting a letter in my hand, upon 
which I relied for particulars, she left without mentioning a name or 
other particular by which to identify the case. On oiDcning the letter 
I found it equally vague, having nothing to identify by, except her 
own signature, which seems to be " Mrs. Anna S. King." I could not 
again find lier. If you have a case which you shall think is probably 
the one intended, please apply my dispatch of this morning to it. 



A Mother's Sacrifice Upon the Altar of Freedom. 

(Letter to Mrs. Bixby, November 21, 1864.) 

Dear Madam — I have been shown in the files of the War Department 
a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the 
mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. 
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should 
attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But 
I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be 
found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that 
our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, 
and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and 
the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice 
upon the altar of freedom. 



44 His Great Human Sympathy. 

In Behalf of a Soldier's Widowed Mothek. 

(Letter to Secretary Stanton, March 1, 1864.) 

My Dear Sir — A poor widow, by the name of Baird, has a son in 
the army, that for some oifense has been sentenced to serve a long time 
without pay, or at most with very little pay. I do not like this punish- 
ment of withholding pay — it falls so very hard upon poor families. 
After he had been serving in this way for several months, at the tearful 
appeal of the poor mother, I made a direction that he be allowed to 
enlist for a new term, on the same conditions as others. She now 
comes, and says she cannot get it acted upon. Please do it. 

Recognizing the Sympathy of Young Hearts. 

(Letter to Mrs. Horace Mann, Washington, April 5, 1864.) 

Madam — The petition of persons under eighteen, praying that I 
would free all slave children, and the heading of which petition i1 
appears you wrote, was handed me a few days since by Senatoi 
Sumner. Please tell these little people I am very glad their young 
hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that, while J 
have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remembei 
that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it. 



Cl)e "g>currtl fester's" Recantation. 



Lincoln, from the time he became a political leader, and 
during his brief term of power, was doubtless the object 
of more abuse^ villification and ridicule than any other 
man in the world. Not only was he the victim in this 
respect of defamers at home, but London Punch, the 
influence of whose satire was great in England, where it 
was important to the Union cause that favor should pre- 
vail, was offensively conspicuous in outrageous caricature 
of Lincoln and in scurrilous references to him and the 
cause. But when he fell by the hand of the assassin 
reviling everywhere changed to homage, and in none of 
his sometime detractors was the change more eloquent 
and completely magnanimous than that shown in Punch's 
recantation. Hence the great significance of this poem. 



I 



€f)e **^cuml ^t^ttt'^'' i^ecantatioiu 

(From London Punch, May 6, 1865.) 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Foully Assassinated April 14, 1865, 

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, 
You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 

Broad for the self-complacent British sneer. 

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair. 
His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease. 

His lack of all we prize as debonair, 

Of power or will to shine, of art to please. 

You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, 
Judging each. step, as though the way were plain; 

Reckless, so it could point its paragraph. 
Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain. 

Beside this corpse that bears for winding sheet 
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew. 

Between the mourners at his head and feet. 
Say, scurril-j ester, is there room for you? 

Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer. 
To lame my pencil and confute my pen — 

To make me own this kind of prince's peer. 
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men. 

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue. 
Noting how to occasion's height he rose, 

How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true, 
How, iron-like, liis temper grew by blows. 

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be, 
How in good fortune and in ill the same; 

Nor bitter in success nor boastful he. 

Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. 

He went about his work — such work as few 

Ever had laid on head and heart and hand — 

As one who knows, where there's a task to do, 

Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command. 

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, 
That God makes instruments to work his will, 

If but that will we can arrive to know, 

Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. 



48 The " Scurril Jester's " Recantation. 

So he went forth to battle, on the side 

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, 

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied 

His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights — 

The uncleared forests, the unbroken soil, 

The iron-bark, that turns the lumberer's axe, 

The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil, 

The prairie, liiding the mazed wanderer's tracks. 

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear — 

Such were the needs that helped his j'outh to train ; 

Rough culture — but such trees large fruit may bear. 
If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. 

So he grew up, a destined work to do. 

And lived to do it; four long-suffering years' 

lU-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report lived through. 

And then he heard the hisses change to cheers. 

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise. 

And took both with the same unwavering mood: 

Till, as he came on light, from darkening days. 

And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, 

A felon hand, between the goal and him. 

Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest — 

And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, 

Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest! 

The words of mercy were upon his lips. 

Forgiveness in his heart and in his pen. 

When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse 

To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men. 

The Old World, and the New, from sea to sea. 
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame ! 

Sore heart, so stopped v/hen it beat high, 

Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came. 

A deed accurst ! Strokes have been struck before 
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt 

If more of horror or disgrace they bore; 

But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out. 

Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, 

Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven; 

And with the martyr's crown crownest a life 
]Much to praise, little to be forgiven ! 



